Set in 2068, the series depicts a "war of nerves" between Earth and the Mysterons: a hostile race of Martians with the power to create functioning copies of destroyed people or objects and use them to carry out acts of aggression against humanity.
Earth is defended by a military organisation called Spectrum, whose top agent, Captain Scarlet, was murdered by the Mysterons and replaced by a reconstruction that later broke free of their control.
He views the episode as an example of the series' "patchy" quality and questions Scarlet and Blue's motives for disobeying Colonel White given their extremely remote chances of finding the correct destruct code.
[6] Chris Bentley, author of Captain Scarlet: The Vault, criticises the editing of the VGR's final approach, pointing out that even though the rocket is destroyed before it hits the base, White, who is counting down the seconds to impact, still reaches zero.
[1] Suggesting that the plot "could have similarly serviced a sitcom", Shane M. Dallmann of Video Watchdog magazine believes "Renegade Rocket" to be much less "gripping" than "Point 783", an episode about an out-of-control super-tank.
Although he calls the revelation of the VGR's target "some nicely played-out drama", he finds the attempts to guess the destruct code "tedious", stating that "the further the episode progresses, the more the script runs out of steam, and instead of rattling along, merely plods, with no genuine direction."
He criticises Spectrum and the military's choice of tactics, wondering why they do not simply launch another rocket to blow up the VGR, and argues that the evacuation of Base Concord renders the Mysteron threat "unsatisfying".
Although he praises "Renegade Rocket"'s visuals, Law describes the overall episode as "a forerunner of effects-led films like Independence Day and its ilk – flashy, nice to look at but insubstantial and ultimately unfulfilling.